E&OE...........
Thank you very much Ian for those very kind words of introduction. Michael the State President, Bob Quinn the State Parliamentary Leader, my many Federal and State parliamentary colleagues, and very importantly the men and women of the Liberal Party of Queensland.
I am as always delighted to be back here in Brisbane. I';m spending on this occasion some four or five days and I';ve had a great opportunity of visiting a number of electorates, making a bit of noise and receiving a bit of noise at a university I seem to recall a couple of nights ago. And there are a number of things I would like to say about the domestic political situation in Australia to which I will return in a moment.
But ladies and gentlemen we meet at a time of remembrance. We meet in the shadow of the first anniversary of those terrible events of the 11th of September 2001 when suddenly without warning and with terrifying and audacious success a terrorist attack was executed against the financial and military citadels of the most powerful nation that mankind has seen. And it';s become a clich to say that the world changed on the 11th of September, but it did. Because what those events revealed was the vulnerability of the most powerful, the fragility of previous assumptions about security, but very importantly, the indivisibility of the cause of defending common values.
And we went to the aid of the United States. We demonstrated our friendship to the United States because those attacks were as much attacks upon this country and upon the values that we hold dear in common with the United States, as they were upon our American friends. And I don';t think any Australian who understands the history of his or her country and understands the values that we hold in common with our American friends, will for a moment apologise for the closeness of the relationship between our two nations.
We share the same values. We share the common belief that a person';s worth is not determined by race or colour or creed or religion or social background, rather by the contribution that each individual man and woman is prepared to make to their society. We share a common commitment to competitive capitalism as the fountain of national wealth and we share a common commitment to the centrality of the family unit as the bedrock institution of our society.
So as we approach the anniversary of those terrible events, we are reminded not only of the people who died, we are reminded of the deaths of ten of our fellow Australians, we';re also reminded of the wonderful resilience of the American people in the face of that attack. We';re also reminded of the things that we hold dear together and we share in common.
We also meet of course against gathering discussion and debate about Iraq';s continued defiance of the United Nations Security Council resolutions. And in that context I can inform you that this morning President Bush telephoned me to discuss the situation in relation to Iraq, and I can tell you that we both share concerns and we certainly share American concerns about continued Iraqi defiance of the United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Australia had previously at a diplomatic level through our Ambassador in Washington put the view to the United States that involvement of the United Nations in the events surrounding Iraq at present is something that Australia would support and something that we believe would be beneficial in the context of trying to achieve a resolution of this difficult issue. Because it must be repeated as often as this issue is discussed that the cause of the present difficulty, the cause of the present concern, the cause of the present apprehension of the United States, particularly against the background of what occurred last year and what it represented, is Iraq';s continued refusal for a number of years to comply with the resolutions and requests of the Security Council. I repeated our view about the involvement of the United Nations in the discussion I had with the President this morning.
I think it';s important to make the point that the United Nations has obligations. The broader world community has obligations in relation to this issue. It is not right, it is not appropriate for all of the responsibility and for all of the obligation to be seen to fall upon the United States. The Administration and the President has not taken a decision to pursue military action against Iraq. When I spoke to the President earlier today, I was talking to a man who shares the same abhorrence and distaste of military conflict as all of us do. Anybody who imagines otherwise does not understand the man, does not understand his motivations. But I was also talking to someone who is determined to do the right thing, not only by his own country, but also by the wider world community.
We all would hope that this issue can be resolved without any military action. And that has been Australia';s view and has been Australia';s objective and will remain our objective. We are not a people who as I have said on a number of occasions since I';ve been here in Queensland, we are not people who seek conflict. We are a peace loving nation. We share the abhorrence of people all around the world of war but we should understand that the cause of the problem is Iraq';s defiance. And I pose the rhetorical question to those who talk of evidence and those who talk about producing material, and that is a separate and important issue in its own right, the reality remains is that if indeed that country had nothing to hide and nothing to conceal from the world community, why has it repeatedly refused to comply with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council?
This is not an easy issue for the United States. It is not an easy issue for Australia. It is not an easy issue for the world. We would all hope that difficult things would go away but we don';t live in an ideal world. We would all hope that we could wake up tomorrow morning and we didn';t have this problem to deal with, but that won';t happen. I think we all know that. And we must work carefully and patiently, but firmly, through the issue, informing as I intend to continually do, the Australian people regarding the Government';s own thinking and the Government';s own objectives.
We';ve put the view to the United States that UN involvement is very desirable. The President will be addressing the United Nations General Assembly within the next week. Because of our alliance with the United States, we';ve had a number of Australian defence personnel within the American military complex from the time the war against terror commenced. And as a consequence of that we have an up to date understanding of military thinking in that country.
Ladies and gentlemen, those are some of the context in which this conference takes place. And necessarily it';s a sober and difficult issue but it';s an issue that I know with goodwill and determination and common sense, the community not only here in Australia, but the world community, can work through.
Can I return my friends to Queensland. Can I return first of all to the magnificent Queenslanders of November the 10th, and that is all of you.
I can remember saying to John Herron when he was the President of the Party here, and I thank him for assuming that responsibility at a challenging time; I said you have got one responsibility. You';ve got to hang to every Federal seat we hold here in Queensland and you';ve got to win back Ryan and you';ve got to win Dickson.
And he delivered, he delivered in spades, he delivered - to borrow an expression of the Treasurer';s - he delivered in full on time on budget. We got all of them, we held all of our seats, we won back Ryan and we won Dickson and I want to thank the Queensland Division for the outstanding Federal result that all of you delivered.
It was a very crucial part of a remarkable victory. A victory that many of us a year ago might not have predicted. A victory 18 months ago probably none of would have predicted but a victory nonetheless when we look back over the events of last year was well deserved and a victory on the merits.
I didn';t agree with Bob Hawke on many things, I did on a few. Some of our common love of sport and a few other things, but what I did agree with him very much on was when he once said that the Australian people rarely get it wrong when it comes to choosing their national government. I mean you might be encouraged to thing that I find that an easy proposition to assimilate at the present time. But it is true when you look back over last year the real seeds of Labor';s destruction at the polls was not planted on the 26th August, it was planted on Bastille Day on the 14th July last year when the Labor Party failed to win the byelection in the seat of Aston where they needed a swing of only 4.2%. A biď·“election taking place incidentally in a city where all of the research had indicated our Federal fortunes were poorer than any of the other capital cities of Australia. And that to me was the turning point of the political debate last year.
When we held Aston I knew that we were back in the game. When we held Aston I knew that we had a real prospect of winning and we held Aston because when it actually came to people indicating a preference for the continuation of the Coalition Government or the election of a Labor Government they weren';t going to risk a return to Labor. They weren';t going to embrace a party that didn';t have policies. They weren';t going to embrace a group of men and women who decided to try and benefit politically off the inevitable difficulty of introducing a major economic reform namely the new taxation system.
Never let it be forgotten that it was Mr Beazley who told his Caucus at the end of the year 2000, don';t worry brothers we are going to surf to victory off the back of discontent about the introduction of the goods and services tax and that was their strategy. That was the strategy, the disastrous strategy so accurately identified by John Della Bosca in that very prescient interview in the Bulletin when he said that the Labor Party should abandon roll back and abandon its opposition to the GST and move onto something else. And it demonstrated that particularly in the modern political era what Australians want above everything else what Australians want are clear declarations of where people and parties stand and what they stand for even more importantly than what they stand against. And political parties have got to identify positive platforms and the success of the Government I led over the last six and half years has been due in no small measure to the fact that we have had an active reform agenda.
If we had rested on our laurels after the 1996 election we would not have won in 1998. I can well remember having a dinner with some backbenchers at the Lodge in 1997 and just about all of them had been elected and many of them from Queensland in 1996 and I remember saying to them that a certain approach was needed to win in 1996 but that approach wouldn';t work in 1998 and if we just thought we could just sit there and talk about Keating again in 1998 or 1999 we were kidding ourselves. He';d gone, the public had thrown him out they weren';t interested in him any more. They wanted to know what we were going to do for the future and I said we needed to have even a radical agenda in order to win again in 1998 and that';s one of the reasons why we decided to embrace taxation reform and that';s the reason why we were still again successful in 1998.
And again in 2001 we needed different approaches and different policies and the same will be the case in 2004 because it is necessary for all political parties to be seen always as having an ongoing agenda and that is why before the last election I identified three very important areas that were going to effect the future of this country separately from the need to provide strong economic management and strong policies on national security and border security and those three areas were the ageing of the population, the balance between work and family and sustainable development and they are policies that are receiving increasing attention from all of my colleagues.
We are like all other western countries coming to terms with the impact of an ageing population. The good news is that the process is not as rapid in this country as in others but we have to find the answers to why for example our workforce participation rate amongst people between 55 and 64 is only about 49% whereas countries like the United States and New Zealand it is somewhere near 60%.
We are as a nation discarding the talents and the value of people in that age cohort all too readily and we need a cultural change not only within the community generally but very particularly within the business and professional communities where the statutory retirement of people from partnerships and so forth at the age of 60 is quite ludicrous and is throwing on the scrap heap people who have an enormous amount of talent, an enormous amount of experience to contribute.
Like all countries our fertility rate is falling. It';s falling for a combination of reasons. I don';t believe that Government policies can dramatically reverse it. They can have some impact at the margins. I frequently describe the struggle of many young parents with children to balance their work and family responsibilities as the barbecue stopper of Australian society, because it';s something that engages everybody';s attention and concern.
Not only do parents involved but involved but obviously their children and their own parents and their friends. And we need a mix of policies. We';ve already gone a long way down that path. The Family Tax Benefit policies introduced in 1996 and broadened and liberalised and made more generous with the tax reform package, the Baby Bonus introduced in pursuance of an election promise and things such as paid maternity leave will all be considered as part of the ongoing reform process. The one qualification I will make at this stage in relation to paid maternity leave, is that it';s not something that we would introduce as a mandatory requirement to be imposed on small business because I do not believe that it';s the sort of obligation that small business should be required.
I just say that our economic strength is well known and well recognised around the world, and the main reason why we have a strong economy in Australia now is that we have had the courage at a Government level to implement the reforms that are necessary to strengthen our economy. The reform process can never be regarded as completed and the day a Government says, well I';ve done enough, the economy';s humming beautifully, I';ll just sit there and have a look at it out my window, the day you do that you';re dead politically because it means that you';ve given up and you';re not trying anymore. So the process of change and economic reform must go on.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am very conscious that although we have done very, very well at a Federal level, the Party here in Queensland faces very significant challenges at a state level. I would be failing in my duty if I didn';t say that and recognise it. Like all family difficulties, there is blame on all sides. I';m not here to take anybody';s part of it, or say somebody';s right or somebody';s wrong. All I can say is to the State Division, if you don';t stop fighting you won';t win. I don';t want to say any more than that. I loves youse all. But believe me, I';m right when I say that. And believe me, the public thinks that. And that';s what is important because we are the servants of the public, or you are the servants of the public of Queensland in a state context, and I am the servant of the public of Queensland in a Federal context, that wants a strong Liberal Party to vote for, and there are hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders that hunger after a strong united State Liberal Party to vote for and it';s you alone as a group of men and women who can deliver that.
My friends, I';ve addressed many State Conventions of this Party. I';ve addressed those Conventions in difficult days for the Liberal Party federally, and we had them here in Queensland largely at the behest of some of our erstwhile colleagues in a former manifestation. But that';s a long time ago. It';s long distant from now. Long distant from now. We';re enjoying good times federally and the Government is in a strong position. But there';s not one of us here today as Members of the Federal Government who are in any way complacent. The political scene can change against us very quickly. Out of the clear blue sky something can come along and can knock you off course and everything can change. And we are constantly vigilant about that.
But I do in conclusion, I want to thank all of you for the tremendous loyalty and support that you have directed towards me and my colleagues over the last six and a half years. We have made an enormous difference to Australia. We have improved this country';s reputation around the world. We have strengthened Australia';s economy. We have made this a more secure country. We have liberated this country';s foreign relations from some kind of ongoing debate about who we';re most associated with.
The reality is that a nation such as Australia is in every sense of the expression, a citizen of the world. We have great links with the Asia Pacific region. Our relations with countries like China could not be better. We have of course a very close association with our friends in the United States and we will always have very deep emotional and cultural ties with the people of Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe. We don';t have to choose which is more important. They';re all important. They';re all important to us politically and culturally and they';re all important to us economically. And Australia should always have seen her place in the world in those terms. Now that';s what I believe six and a half years of united Liberal-National Party Government has delivered to this country. It';s a recipe and a formula that really does work and it wouldn';t have worked without your help.
I want to thank all of my colleagues. I want to thank you Michael and Brendan Cooper and the Party organisation here in Queensland, and all the other Members. I want to thank my Federal parliamentary colleagues from Queensland and all my other Federal Cabinet Minsters who are here. I';m very proud of everything that they have done. They';ve been a great team. I';ve got great Ministers. I';ve got great Members and great Senators. And we are above everything else a team. And we have only one political enemy and that';s the Australian Labor Party. And we';ve never forgotten that.
So my friends, thank you for what you have done. It';s great to be back in Queensland. You delivered magnificently at the last Federal election. I shall never forget that and I will always be in your debt.
Thank you.